her, thinking, I knew, that this was my only chance to get myself a wife and so they'd better be nice to the girl, no matter what she was like. And seeing her with what I fancied to be their eyes, I realized that she wasn't outstandingly pretty, particularly bright, or even very talented.

And what was she thinking? That she had got herself virtually engaged to a useless half-sense because he had had a brief moment of glory as a war hero? Trapped with this imbecile and his dull, stuffy family, and not being able to get out of it without being cruel?

What were they actually thinking? I didn't know. But they did—Mother knew what everybody was thinking, right down to the last convolution of the subconscious mind and Sylvia knew what everyone else was feeling, and the others ... they knew or at least sensed part of what was going on. But I was impercipient, I couldn't tell anything, I was excluded—out in the cold—and, being unable ever really to know, was forced to draw the worst conclusions.

I took Lucy home that evening. They had to trust me that far alone because it would have looked absurd for Danny or Tim to come along as chaperone, and anyway I had been there alone before, when I had gone to see her.

"Lucy," I said as we stood awkwardly before her door, "I don't want you to feel, just because of what might have happened in a burst of—of patriotic fervor, that you're bound or—"

"No, Kevin," she murmured, without looking at me. "I understand. I don't feel bound or—committed in any way. And you mustn't feel bound, either."

"That's good." I felt a deep sense of sorrow working its way down to settle in my viscera and, if she'd had much perceptiveness, things might have been different then. But she hadn't. I took a deep breath, determined to carry my heartbreak off with dignity. "Well, good-by, Lucy."

Although she had never really been close to me—in fact, I had never so much as kissed her—I felt lonelier now, without even the hope of her, than I ever had before. I began to take my long walks in the park again, brooding over the power that might have been mine, if only I hadn't been such a damn fool as to give freely without asking anything in return. During the war, I could have got anything I wanted in exchange for what I'd done, or, rather, for what I could do, but I'd been too busy healing. Now it was too late for asking.

Nature, being all I had left, became closer to me than ever before. And one morning, after a violent storm the night before, I mourned over the fallen trees and smashed flowers as I had never mourned over fallen and smashed men—first, because I hadn't cared, and then because I had known I could help.

Come to think of it, how did I know it was only people I could help?

"Mother," I said eagerly when I came home that evening, "I can heal other things besides people! Trees and shrubs and—"

"That's nice, dear. Perhaps we can get you a job with the Park Department if you're tired of sitting home, and in the meantime you'd better comb those leaves out of your hair. Sylvia, did you call that techno?"

"Yes, Mother," Sylvia said gloomily. Her guy still hadn't called. Knowing now how she must feel, I could feel sorry for her. "It said it'll be over as soon as it can, but that it might take days."

"We'll have to eat synthetics for dinner if that stove isn't fixed soon," my mother said fretfully, and went off into the kitchen to mess around with the machinery and thus make certain the techno had a real hard job on its hands when it finally did show up.

Oh, the devil with it, I thought. No use hoping to interest the family in any extension of my gift that had no practical value except for nature lovers. I might as well seize such meager chances as were still open to me. I wasn't going to be an idealistic idiot any longer.

"Sylvie," I said to my sister, "I've changed my mind about that testimonial."

She looked blankly at me out of her reverie. "What